R devel - Jul 2020 - Strange behaviour of methods::slot() when returning a tibble

I have an S4 object class defined in a Bioconductor package which contains
multiple slots, some of which are tibbles, whilst others are vectors. If I call

slot(object, name)

where 'name' is an slot that contains a vector, everything works as
expected. However, when I call slot(object, name) where 'name' is an
slot that contains a tibble I get the following warning:


Warning message:
`...` is not empty.

We detected these problematic arguments:
* `needs_dots`

These dots only exist to allow future extensions and should be empty.
Did you misspecify an argument?
Making 'packages.html' ... done

Wrapping the call in suppressWarnings() doesn't stop this, and this warning
is printed every time the resultant object is called, e.g. df <- slot(object,
name); df, would not print the error on the first call, but would print the
warning every time df is  printed.

For an MWE


setClass("track", slots = c(x="numeric",
y="data.frame"))
myTrack <- new("track", x = -4:4, y = tibble(y = 1))

myTrack

df <- slot(myTrack, "y")
df

The package passes R CMD check even though this warning is produced in most
examples. Changing to a generic S3 data.frame also doesn't produce this
error. I'm running the following configuration:


R version 4.0.2 (2020-06-22)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/blas/libblas.so.3.7.1
LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.7.1

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C               LC_TIME=en_AU.UTF-8
 [4] LC_COLLATE=en_AU.UTF-8     LC_MONETARY=en_AU.UTF-8   
LC_MESSAGES=en_AU.UTF-8
 [7] LC_PAPER=en_AU.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                  LC_ADDRESS=C
[10] LC_TELEPHONE=C             LC_MEASUREMENT=en_AU.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] parallel  stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

other attached packages:
[1] ngsReports_1.5.3    tibble_3.0.2        ggplot2_3.3.2      
BiocGenerics_0.34.0

Thanks in advance,

Steve

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I don't get any warning (but am using slightly different versions of 
everything than you are).

You can find where that message is coming from by running 
options(warn=2) first, which will convert it to an error.

Duncan Murdoch

On 10/07/2020 11:54 a.m., Stephen Martin Pederson wrote:
> I have an S4 object class defined in a Bioconductor package which contains
multiple slots, some of which are tibbles, whilst others are vectors. If I call
> 
> slot(object, name)
> 
> where 'name' is an slot that contains a vector, everything works as
expected. However, when I call slot(object, name) where 'name' is an
slot that contains a tibble I get the following warning:
> 
> 
> Warning message:
> `...` is not empty.
> 
> We detected these problematic arguments:
> * `needs_dots`
> 
> These dots only exist to allow future extensions and should be empty.
> Did you misspecify an argument?
> Making 'packages.html' ... done
> 
> Wrapping the call in suppressWarnings() doesn't stop this, and this
warning is printed every time the resultant object is called, e.g. df <-
slot(object, name); df, would not print the error on the first call, but would
print the warning every time df is  printed.
> 
> For an MWE
> 
> 
> setClass("track", slots = c(x="numeric",
y="data.frame"))
> myTrack <- new("track", x = -4:4, y = tibble(y = 1))
> 
> myTrack
> 
> df <- slot(myTrack, "y")
> df
> 
> The package passes R CMD check even though this warning is produced in most
examples. Changing to a generic S3 data.frame also doesn't produce this
error. I'm running the following configuration:
> 
> 
> R version 4.0.2 (2020-06-22)
> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
> Running under: Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
> 
> Matrix products: default
> BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/blas/libblas.so.3.7.1
> LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.7.1
> 
> locale:
>   [1] LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C              
LC_TIME=en_AU.UTF-8
>   [4] LC_COLLATE=en_AU.UTF-8     LC_MONETARY=en_AU.UTF-8   
LC_MESSAGES=en_AU.UTF-8
>   [7] LC_PAPER=en_AU.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                  LC_ADDRESS=C
> [10] LC_TELEPHONE=C             LC_MEASUREMENT=en_AU.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
> 
> attached base packages:
> [1] parallel  stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods  
base
> 
> other attached packages:
> [1] ngsReports_1.5.3    tibble_3.0.2        ggplot2_3.3.2      
BiocGenerics_0.34.0
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Steve
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

Thanks Duncan. Much appreciated & I can now see it's
ellipsis::check_dots_empty() causing the trouble. I'll take the question to
the github issues page for that package.

All the best,

Steve
________________________________
From: Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, 11 July 2020 1:38 AM
To: Stephen Martin Pederson <stephen.pederson at adelaide.edu.au>; r-devel
at r-project.org <r-devel at r-project.org>
Subject: Re: [Rd] Strange behaviour of methods::slot() when returning a tibble

I don't get any warning (but am using slightly different versions of
everything than you are).

You can find where that message is coming from by running
options(warn=2) first, which will convert it to an error.

Duncan Murdoch

On 10/07/2020 11:54 a.m., Stephen Martin Pederson wrote:
> I have an S4 object class defined in a Bioconductor package which contains
multiple slots, some of which are tibbles, whilst others are vectors. If I call
>
> slot(object, name)
>
> where 'name' is an slot that contains a vector, everything works as
expected. However, when I call slot(object, name) where 'name' is an
slot that contains a tibble I get the following warning:
>
>
> Warning message:
> `...` is not empty.
>
> We detected these problematic arguments:
> * `needs_dots`
>
> These dots only exist to allow future extensions and should be empty.
> Did you misspecify an argument?
> Making 'packages.html' ... done
>
> Wrapping the call in suppressWarnings() doesn't stop this, and this
warning is printed every time the resultant object is called, e.g. df <-
slot(object, name); df, would not print the error on the first call, but would
print the warning every time df is  printed.
>
> For an MWE
>
>
> setClass("track", slots = c(x="numeric",
y="data.frame"))
> myTrack <- new("track", x = -4:4, y = tibble(y = 1))
>
> myTrack
>
> df <- slot(myTrack, "y")
> df
>
> The package passes R CMD check even though this warning is produced in most
examples. Changing to a generic S3 data.frame also doesn't produce this
error. I'm running the following configuration:
>
>
> R version 4.0.2 (2020-06-22)
> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
> Running under: Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
>
> Matrix products: default
> BLAS:   /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/blas/libblas.so.3.7.1
> LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.7.1
>
> locale:
>   [1] LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C              
LC_TIME=en_AU.UTF-8
>   [4] LC_COLLATE=en_AU.UTF-8     LC_MONETARY=en_AU.UTF-8   
LC_MESSAGES=en_AU.UTF-8
>   [7] LC_PAPER=en_AU.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                  LC_ADDRESS=C
> [10] LC_TELEPHONE=C             LC_MEASUREMENT=en_AU.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=C
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] parallel  stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods  
base
>
> other attached packages:
> [1] ngsReports_1.5.3    tibble_3.0.2        ggplot2_3.3.2      
BiocGenerics_0.34.0
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Steve
>
>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

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